Li Bai Quotes

#1. You ask me why I dwell
amidst these jade-green hills?
I smile. No words can tell
the stillness in my heart.
Peach blossoms drift streamwater
away deep in mystery.
I live in the other world
one that lies beyond the human.

Li Bai

#2. Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-tree trickles on my bare head.

Li Bai

#3. Heaven is high, Earth Wide. Bitter between them flies my sorrow.

Li Bai

#4. Forever and forever and forever

Li Bai

#5. I bow in reverence to the white cloud.

Li Bai

#6. From the walls of Baidi high in the coloured dawn To Jiangling by night-fall is three hundred miles, Yet monkeys are still calling on both banks behind me To my boat these ten thousand mountains away.

Li Bai

#7. All the birds have flown up and gone; A lonely cloud floats leisurely by. We never tire of looking at each other - Only the mountain and I.

Li Bai

#8. The world is like a great empty dream. Why should one toil away one's life?

Li Bai

#9. The living is a passing traveler; The dead, a man come home.

Li Bai

#10. Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine, No friends at hand, so I poured alone; I raised my cup to invite the moon, Turned to my shadow, and we became three.

Li Bai

#11. Shade and light are different in every valley.

Li Bai

#12. In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.

Li Bai

#13. He who neglects to drink of the spring of experience is likely to die of thirst in the desert of ignorance.

Li Bai

#14. Growing older, I love only quietness: who need be concerned with the things of this world? Looking back, what better plan than this: returning to the grove.

Li Bai

#15. It's long since I've gone to the East Mountains.
How many seasons have the tiny roses bloomed?
White clouds - unblown - fall apart.
In whose court has the bright moon dropped?

Li Bai

#16. When the hunter sets traps only for rabbits, tigers and dragons are left uncaught.

Li Bai

#17. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.

Li Bai

#18. Bears, dragons, tempestuous on mountain and river, Startle the forest and make the heights tremble. Clouds darken beneath the darkness of rain, streams pale with a pallor of mist. The gods of Thunder and Lightning Shatter the whole range.

Li Bai

#19. The autumn air is clear,
The autumn moon is bright.
Fallen leaves gather and scatter,
The jackdaw perches and starts anew.
We think of each other- when will we meet?
This hour, this night, my feelings are hard.

Li Bai

#20. No one understands now. Those who could
hear a song this deeply vanished long ago.

Li Bai

#21. There is another world, other than/ this one we choose to live in.

Li Bai

#22. You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom,
The water flows.

Li Bai

#23. And sorrows return, though we drown them with wine,
Since the world can in no way answer our craving,
I will loosen my hair tomorrow and take to a fishingboat.

Li Bai

#24. Since Life is but a Dream, Why toil to no avail?

Li Bai

#25. To find pleasure in life, make the most of the spring.

Li Bai

#26. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

Li Bai

#27. From some home a jade flute sends dark notes drifting,
Scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang.
Tonight, if we should hear the willow-breaking song,
Who could help but long for the gardens of home?

Li Bai

#28. I am asked why I live in the green mountains; I smile but reply not, for my heart is at rest. The flowing waters carry the image of the peach blossoms far, far away; there is an earth, there is a heaven, unknown to men.

Li Bai

#29. Now let you and me buy wine today! Why say we have not the price? My horse spotted with five flowers, My fur-coat worth a thousand pieces of gold, These I will take out, and call my boy To barter them for sweet wine. And with you twain, let me forget The sorrow of ten thousand ages!

Li Bai

#30. You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain; I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care. As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, I have a world apart that is not among men.

Li Bai